The Story of A Casual Tank in Azeroth

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Individuals in our guild have done a lot of content from this last big patch, some even completing raids on the ToC area. Personally I have seen more content than I thought I would see this quickly. However, overall as a guild I think we have skipped too much content.

For me it all started with places that are not warrior tank friendly. Az N and Old Kingdom for example. Both fairly straight forward places now that I am over-geared for them. They are both mid 70 dungeons that should have been mastered before skipping them altogether, but it was a lot easier to do a place I enjoyed like DTK over and over.

Don’t get me wrong, some poorly structured content like Oculus should be skipped, but most of the dungeons that have been designed are pretty good training grounds for future raiders.

Now we have once again started doing the same thing. Instead of perfecting every wing in Naxx we are doing Ulduar and even H ToC raiding. Then people wonder why Ony is such a pain in the butt.

Ony is the perfect example of gear vs experience. No matter how good your gear is, if your party has not mastered movement and position awareness you will wipe there over, and over. It is already being pugged bu some people and it will be farm content soon enough, but the opportunity to learn is missed by just having an overachieving healer or tank or insane DPS “take you” through the content.

Raiding is about team mechanics, but specially about everyone doing their assigned job. Skipping content that shows you certain mechanics of the game does a huge disservice to you as a raider, and it hurt your future performance in a team. Another example of commonly skipped content is Heigan’s dance in Naxx. Overall not a bad fight, but one that people dread because it requires everyone to do something they are not used to doing… moving around.

Before you skip content on try to get into the next new shiny dungeon make sure you are at a point where you enjoy the current content you are geared and experience for. Understanding the fight mechanics is not just the raid leader’s job. Sure its fun to just say, let me know where to stand and I will fire my 9K DPS at the boss, but it does not help the group.

I have been leveling a priest and been loving the experience. As frustrating as it is to be the main target in every PvP encounter, it is also very rewarding to be able to make a difference and “save” things by getting the right heal out at the right time. There are comparable skills like rage management vs mana management, and watching threat… but it also has a lot more situational, like mobs just trowing something at you because they felt like it and interrupting you. That is not even counting someone pulling agro or standing on (yet again) the fire. Its a lot more fun than I thought it would be and will most likely ultimately make me a better tank.